Via Dolorosa
by Silver Pard
Summary: Sic erat in fatis. So it was fated. AeriSeph oneshot.


Disclaimer: No, not my characters, and yes, the AeriSeph I swore to someone I'd never write. Or was that post? Well, you've got to try everything once.

Warning: Sappiness and angst ahead.

* * *

"Do you believe in fate?" I asked him once. And he had replied, "No. I believe in nothing but myself." 

It's difficult to remember, now, when he first appeared.

I knew who he was, of course. How could I not? You saw the man staring out at you from recruitment posters, green – no, green is far too weak a word – eyes boring into you from mere paper, assessing you, demanding you prove your worth. You saw him standing still at Welcoming Parades, a stark contrast in his alertness to the haste around him. You saw him on the television, on newsreels, on election campaigns (Shinra liked to give everyone the impression that they had a choice) and even if it was only for a few seconds, his face haunted you.

People… who are impressive from a distance are rarely impressive close up. Close up, you can see their flaws, the spider-web cracks in their perfection. Not so with him.

Hair so pale in the weak light – not white, nor grey, for it had none of the brittle colourlessness of the old, but instead had a chromatic quality of silver. Clothing well tailored, worn with an easy elegance that was undoubtedly natural. And eyes… so intense, yet unreadable. Green, emerald, malachite, jade… there was simply no way to define them. As with everything, his very perfection denied definition. You could use only the palest analogies – hair like silver, eyes like emeralds, as pale as fine porcelain. He was a vision, a wondrous thing of beauty, and he was terrifying. That was the first thing I noticed about him.

I don't recall ever talking to him that first time, only being aware of him, standing in the shadows, a mirage of silver and ebony wreathed in darkness. He frightened me with his silence far more effectively than any Turk brandishing a weapon in my face. There was simply so much more to fear from him, from that… being, that destroying demi-god with the soul-devouring eyes… so much more than from a mere man in a blue suit. What was there to fear from that? Don't get me wrong, I respect the Turks. Behind every inflated reputation there is some grain of truth. But I don't fear them. Not in the same way. If you died, you died. If you were tortured, you were tortured. Simple. Karma. But to die at his hands… anything but that.

Anything.

I couldn't tell you why or how exactly death at his hands would have been any different from any other death. It was simply something I felt, deep in my soul. Death at his hands would have been otherworldly, alien. Remote, lonely. Like him. Soul destroying.

He stood still and watched with peaceful tranquillity for hours, emerald eyes starved. And then he simply turned and left, as silently as he appeared.

* * *

He would return often. I don't know whether anyone noticed his absences, or commented upon them. Probably no one dared. I suppose that if you're the most powerful man in the military, you went where you wanted, when you wanted, and hardly needed reasons. 

I like to think he found a measure of peace here, where the Planet speaks loudest, and came back for that. I don't like to remember that he was a man who could and would kill with ease and little remorse, though I never saw that side of him.

I don't remember when it was we finally began talking. I do remember many of the conversations, but of all things, I remember his voice the most. It wasn't invasive, as you might expect from someone who had to scream orders or yell battle cries, although there was a subdued power there. It wrapped itself around you, as intangible as the threads of the air, but you were as certain that it was there, comforting, _solid_, in some indescribable way. There was something in that voice that could tempt angels to sin, that could repair the shattered and broken, that could destroy the world in a single word.

It was quite clear he himself did not believe in such things. Everything about him spoke of military precision, and every word of logic ingrained and bred, comforting and destroying by turns. Most of all he hated fate. Fate consisted of chains to him. He would dance to no one's tune, would be no marionette to Fate. I never pointed out he might not have such choice. I did not dare. There was something in the way he spoke then that told you that if this man were subjected to following a path other than that of his own making, he would rather destroy it in his own funeral pyre rather than carry on walking.

Of all men, he was the only one I believed when he said firmly that there was no such thing as fate.

How ironic.

* * *

"Would you kill me, if you were ordered to?" I was picking flowers, studiously avoiding his gaze. He sat opposite, one knee drawn up to his chest, black cloak spreading around him, a pool of pure darkness, with no gleam of light to be found. I had grown used to the light of the church rather than the drab grey of the rest of the Slums, and to see darkness enter was disconcerting. 

"No." He shifted slightly, turned his head so that those beautiful eyes held me captive. "Not for the reasons you might assume. Not because you're a woman. I know plenty of female soldiers, some whom have been the best I've known, though it is extremely difficult for a woman to make SOLDIER. Nor would I refuse to kill you because I know you. Or because I might even like you."

I ignored the quiet, traitorous whisper of hope that threaded through me at those words. Or at least, I tried to. "I wouldn't kill you, because you're a civilian. It goes against my code of honour." _Honour_. How… odd. I knew plenty of people with no concept of honour, had no idea of the meaning of the word. I truly believe that there is no such thing in Shinra, that honour is a weakness to be destroyed. Yet I also believe that he meant it. He was the type of man you don't call a soldier, you call a warrior. I picked a flower, one of my best, inhaling the sweet scent before I moved and placed it so that it was held against his chest by the straps that crossed it. The look on his face!

"Why is it against your code of honour?" I waved my fingers in front of his face, and couldn't quite stop the giggle when he blinked, looking rather stunned. It was a very odd expression to see on him, the famous General, the monster-angel of battle. I still smile when I think about it, though it's been hard, for a long time, to find things to smile about.

"You're unarmed," he said at last, pulling himself together. One gloved hand struck out and caught my own, dwarfing it easily. I felt truly fragile for the first time in my life, seeing how tiny, how delicate my fingers looked, caught between his own. His fingers were long and slender for a man, but still I felt one twitch and he could have broken my own.

In fact, I had no doubt of it. His eyes held a whisper of the Planet in them, some of Her strength, Her power. I had not realised that before.

"You've never held a weapon, or if you have, never practised at it long enough to get the calluses to protect your fingers. There is no hardened flesh over your knuckles indicating that you know the way to hit someone, and have built up a form of protection against the repeated abuse of such practise. You have no muscle tone to your arms. Nor anywhere else that I can tell." He looked vaguely amused when my face turned red. He always looked vaguely amused, rather than simply amused. It was something in the way he never really smiled with his mouth. The corners would turn up slightly, and that was sweet, and beautiful, but it was in his eyes that he showed most of his humour. They sparkled with his mirth; lost the coldness he usually showed the world. The amusement faded, and the seriousness came back, and I was sad to see it. "You are quite simply, a complete innocent to the ways of fighting. I have never killed an unarmed civilian, or one that wasn't intent upon killing me. I will never do so."

There was a slight emphasis on 'never', and I wondered why.

* * *

I remember most of all, what it was to watch him fight. Not seriously, of course, for no one was quite foolish enough to do anything to engender such a response from him. He did, however, demonstrate some of the fighting styles he had learned – so many of them, all of them seamlessly blending together to create such a terrible, beautiful angel of death. In movement he had a stunning, effortless grace, a fluidity of action impossible to replicate. But when he fought… it wasn't like gymnastics, or dancing, or anything quite so romantic. It was like… mathematics. He knew his every limitation and advantage, knew exactly how far he could push his body, what it could do. He knew every inch of himself, and every movement was precise, accurate, through this knowledge. 

He taught me a few of the simpler moves – moves every woman will find she needs at some point here in Slums, where sex is the easiest escape men can find from their drab existence. I had no aptitude for it, but he was a patient teacher, stern enough to require diligence, but not so harsh as to stop his student learning. I could see perfectly well from his repeated attempts that he was good instructor; I simply had no talent for what he was trying to teach, it was something quite alien to me. He wasn't surprised.

After a while he stopped teaching me, and he returned one day with a simple staff. How very practical. Other men might have brought me ribbons and dresses, or chocolates – and I had all the roses I needed – but he gave me a weapon. I must confess, I laughed to see it, and he, of course, merely allowed the corners of his lips to turn up.

"You need some form of protection." I like to think there was some concern in his voice, but I doubt it. "I know you won't accept teaching in guns or swords or _any_ of the weapons I specialise in –" His tone took on a slight air of self-mockery. "But I imagine this would be to your liking."

It was. He knew me better than I realised.

* * *

I would have liked to say he was jealous, when I met Zack, and started dating him. I would have liked _some_ demonstration that he recognised I had charms of my own. Well, I would have liked such a thing, but I didn't get it. 

I don't think he quite realised I was never as young as I looked. No one in the Slums is.

Why would I date Zack? He was kind, and handsome, and he made me laugh. He did the things a boyfriend was supposed to, he gave me gifts – the sort a boyfriend would give his girl, not weapons – and he cherished me, acted as if I was the only woman in the world he would like to be with. His eyes strayed frequently, but I said nothing. Who was I to talk, who had my heart set on something I could never attain? Most of all, I was tired of waiting for _him_. There is probably no other woman in Midgar who would say such a thing. Hair like silver, eyes like emeralds, the face of an angel... If you were in with a chance, even the very smallest, was he not worth waiting for?

He was, undoubtedly. But why on earth would he want me, when there were so many others, so many who were more beautiful, more talented, more _everything_ than I was?

* * *

It was high summer, before he returned. Not that you could tell, below the plate, but _I_ could. I would have liked to be outside the confines of the city then. I would have liked to have seen the sky, and learn if it was as beautiful as I imagined it to be. I imagined it being a pale blue, the colour you saw baby boys dressed in if you were rich enough to afford such things, when you could quite as easily settle for some nondescript thing bought cheaply at some store. I imagined the grass I had never seen to be a verdant green, a brighter, purer colour than that of the leaves of my flowers. I imagined the sun to be warm, and the breeze to be cool, and everything so bright and beautiful. I told him so, when he walked up beside me as I lay in my flowerbed, smelling the flowers and imagining myself free. 

"…It's best not to imagine such things." He knelt beside me, reaching out to touch a flower, his face solemn and his head bowed. "Such things are near impossible for someone born in Midgar to have."

"You have them." It hurt, to be told it was only a dream. It hurt more than I had imagined it would, to be told that such beauty was not something I would ever know. He turned sharply to face me, his expression fierce, and for a moment I felt the fear I had felt that first time, when I saw him silently watching in the church doorway.

"You don't ever want to be like me." It was more a hiss than a sentence, filled with a fury I could not contemplate the depths of, and pain and hatred and… self-loathing?

He saw the instinctive recoil and stopped, looking pained, as if I had struck him, by moving away. "I… would like nothing more than to let you have that dream." Quiet, so quiet, as if he could not allow such things to pass through his lips without an automatic attempt to try and stop them. "But… it is only a dream."

Silence, and not of the comfortable sort I liked sharing with him. It was the silence you find in the grave, and suddenly it was cold, so cold, in that place, surrounded by bright and beautiful flowers that made me think of the sun I had never known.

"I'll tell you… if you like." He turned back at last, a flower cradled in his hands, seemingly without his conscious knowledge, which he tucked carefully and without thinking behind my ear, his eyes trained upon my face. "What it's like, out there. If you want me to."

How beautiful he was. "I would like that."

* * *

There had to come a time, of course, when he didn't come back. I tried to tell myself that. It still didn't prepare me for the day when the papers and news bulletins announced he'd died on a mission to a small mountain town, somewhere on the Western Continent. I had imagined there would come a time when he simply didn't want to see me any more. I don't think anyone imagined he could do such a mortal thing as die. 

I would wait for hours in the church, the flowerbeds, waiting for him to return. _Sic erat in fatis_, the Planet whispered, in a language dead and long-forgotten before my people began to tender the idea of staying here.

I did not listen - dum spiro, spero.

Angels don't die.

Days turned into weeks, and weeks into months, and months finally into years, and still he didn't come back. Neither did Zack, and although I told myself this was likely because he had met someone else he liked more than me – how easy that seemed to be for the men in my life! – a tiny part of me whispered that he was dead, or as good as.

How terrible it is, to mourn both your first boyfriend and your… true love?

Sephiroth is dead. In every way that matters. That is what my mother tells me. I would like to say goodbye, as I never realised I would have to when he left, saying he would be back before I knew he was gone. I would like to say one last prayer for him.

I think I'm entitled to that.

* * *

A/N: So old I think it's mouldered. There used to be a second part in Sephiroth's POV, but that was lost with one of the many hard drive crashes. --_grins sheepishly_-- I felt so bad about not being able to scrape together enough writing ability to add a new chapter to WWL for Sulphurya I thought I'd post this in hopes of distracting her. 


End file.
